ZDEER: GOOD PRODUCTS JUMP OUT OF THE BOX, EVERY STEP OF INTELLIGENT HEALTH NURTURE INNOVATION

Q: Lang Award

A: Zhu Jiangtao, founder and CEO of ZDEER

ZDEER was founded in 2014 and is positioned as an innovative technology brand in the field of "intelligent health nurture and consumer medical nurture", combining intelligent technology with traditional health nurture.

After several products such as intelligent Moxibustion Box and Steam Foot Bath Massager were released, ZDEER relied on its strong patent research and development strength. The road of innovation becomes clearer and ZDEER keeps jumping out of the box with unique promotion and marketing channels, which forced the product development and innovation of the entire industry.  ZDEER uses "good product logic" to establish the brand's advantage.

"Lang Award" invited Zhu Jiangtao, the founder of ZDEER, to review every step of this road of innovation with him.

 

Q: What is the background and composition of the team?

A: When I went to university in 2008, I started to pay close attention to the medical and health field. In 2014, I founded "ZDEER" while studying at Wuhan University of Technology, focusing on the field of intelligent health nurture and consumer medical nurture, and committed to the layout of comprehensive health categories.

In the team, Liu Jihui, the dean of the ZDEER Health Research Institute, is a veteran who has been engaged in the research and development of intelligent consumer medical products for 26 years and has provided technical support for Huawei, Ohm and other companies. The chief industrial designer Xu Li once served for Philips, Midea, Joyoung and other electrical appliances brands.

 

Q: What was your idea, when you founded the company in 2014?

A: Everyone will experience birth, aging, sickness and death, and those who are sick need help. When I founded ZDEER in 2014, I wanted to do my best to provide some help to others.

Since then, we have been adhering to this original intention, making products with heart, and empowering traditional health nurture methods with modern technology, so that traditional comprehensive health nurture projects can appear in front of everyone in a new form of intelligence.

 

Q: What was the health market like at that time? What is the approximate size of the market and what are the salient features?

We have done some research. As early as 2010, 80% of the consumers of health nurture products were middle-aged and elderly people between 40 and 70 years old. However, by 2015, the proportion of the population has changed dramatically. The consumption ratio of young and middle-aged people has risen significantly, and has gradually become one of the mainstream buying groups like middle-aged and elderly consumers.

We felt this change for the first time, and began to pay attention to the health nurture needs of young people. We entered the market with intelligent moxibustion, opening up a new field of intelligent health nurture and consumer medical nurture.

 

Q: What are the differences between intelligent health nurture and traditional health nurture products? What caused this difference?

A: Intelligent health products match supply and demand based on users' needs, and pay more attention to people's individual needs. The so-called intelligent health nurture is essentially more comfortable, more convenient, more compliant with human nature, and more in line with the lifestyle of modern people.

Take intelligent moxibustion as an example, the “ZDEER” intelligent moxibustion category circumvents the drawbacks of traditional moxibustion, such as smoke, smell and inconvenience. Starting from the working principle of moxibustion, it is more convenient for modern people to relax at home and office.

At present, technological innovation is profoundly changing traditional industries and people's lifestyles, and the comprehensive health industry is also transforming into intelligent, integrated health services. This means that in the digital age, in order to adapt to changes of consumer lifestyle and needs, brands must have real-time insight into the market, start from technological innovation, and quickly seize the industry's trend.

 

Q: What are the product opportunities between traditional health nurture and modern lifestyle?

Nowadays, young people are more pursuing a high-quality lifestyle, forming the consumer concept of “face value”. Brands are thinking about how to incorporate the concept of the “fashion culture” and the expression of young people’s lifestyle into their brand products.

If a product wants to capture young consumers, it requires not only functional innovation, but also aesthetic tricks. Therefore, today’s health nurture products should not only focus on the functional utility, but also pay attention to the product’s appearance, packaging, and use scenarios. It should start from details, innovate in functions and sculpt in appearance, to create more youthful products with the labels of the times, to create innovative categories, and to disrupt the traditional health nurture market.

Our idea is to redo the medical products with the concept of consumer goods with a younger attitude.

 

Q: Why is there such a product as "Intelligent Cupping Massager"? What unique insights did you have at that time for the users and market?

A: Faced with an endless stream of health-nurture products and the rise of young health-nurture people, many brands have begun to realize the opportunities and pain points of the health-nurture market in this era.

Traditional cupping and scraping is very popular in beauty salons as a health-nurture method, but it is very inconvenient to operate at home due to limited operating techniques and usage scenarios. After jumping out of the box with intelligent moxibustion, the ZDEER has conducted in-depth research on users and the market, and conducted product research and development from the perspective of consumers. The traditional cupping scraping method has been intelligently innovated, so that more people can enjoy the beauty salon-level SPA at home.

 

Q: In the new consumer fields such as food and cosmetics, the supply chain is a sensitive topic. What difficulties did the "ZDEER" encounter in the supply chain during the production process?

A: The current core of "ZDEER" is independent research, development and production. We have established independent production plants in Henan and Hunan, and they are all 100% wholly-owned subsidiaries.

There are two aspects to supply chain problems: On the one hand, the market capacity is increasing rapidly, consumer demand is constantly changing, and the technical pressure of continuous innovation... We will encounter all aspects of problems everyday in the production process. All problems are flocking to the end of the production supply chain. But on the other hand, it is precisely the feedback of these problems that forced the continuous innovation and improvement of the production end.

ZDEER keeps studying the future forms and usage scenarios of medical and health products based on the logic of consumers, and matching supply and demand completely based on people's needs. Through a positive virtuous circle of continuous attraction, feedback, improvement, re-attraction, re-feedback, and re-improvement, a set of own product development and production models have been established.

By exploring the needs of different groups of people, we can interpret consumer needs in a full-scale, and then feed back the upstream manufacturing end. With this complete system, "ZDEER" successfully avoided many problems in the production process, and achieved a deeper level of control over product quality at the same time.

 

Q: Why does ZDEER choose a 100% holding factory?

A: There are three main reasons for choosing a 100% holding factory:

Firstly, a complete system of supply chain modules, production organization modules, and product quality inspection modules can be built for better control product production capacity, quality control, and cost in an all-round way.

Secondly, at the production end of the product 100% holding factory, you can use the synergy effect of the factory to quickly optimize the division of labor, which contributes to the unique positive cycle model: "first sample - fan experience - feedback interaction - modification and finalization - factory orders to produce bulk goods - consumer purchases - experience feedback - collection of information - product re-innovation”, which can solve the problems of product feedback more flexibly and quickly, and effectively innovate products in real time.

Thirdly, ZDEER has full decision-making power on the production direction of the factory, keeps up with the pace of innovation and research of the R&D team in time, makes all internal production decisions efficient, and quickly follows the current changing market trends and product trends .

 

Q: The other two products of "ZDEER", Intelligent Moxibustion and Steam Foot Bath Massager, have applied for nearly 2,000 patents. How is this done? What are the outstanding technological innovations?

A: ZDEER has been following the positioning of scientific health nurture, advocating scientific health nurture, and treating health nurture in a scientific spirit.

From Intelligent Moxibustion to Intelligent Steam Foot Bath Massager, we are using scientific methods to deeply develop health-nurture products that meet the needs of contemporary people. At the beginning of each product development of ZDEER, in-depth market research is conducted, a large number of scientific research documents are collected, the working principles of other products on the market are studied, various comparative experiments are done in large numbers, and the research and development knowledge base is constantly updated. For example, functions such as heat treatment technology, wireless portability, and Bluetooth control of the Intelligent Moxibustion category are all innovated on this basis.

Throughout the entire intelligent health and consumer medical field, new product categories are emerging one after another, but there are really few brand teams that have technology that can break through and innovate, and have teams that can develop in-depth research and development. ZDEER pays attention to technology and patent reserves, and attaches importance to the registration of medical devices and patents. On the one hand, it wants to motivate itself to make continuous breakthroughs and explore more new categories so that the brand can remain invincible. On the other hand, it is also forced the entire industry contributes to R&D and innovation to inject new vitality into the comprehensive health market.

 

Q: Why did you think of crowdfunding on Xiaomi Youpin for ZDEER Intelligent Cupping Set?

A: In our opinion, Xiaomi Youpin is the benchmark for boutique e-commerce platforms, with a vast circle of fans.

The ZDEER Intelligent Cupping Set is selected for crowdfunding in Xiaomi Youpin. There are two main factors: On the one hand, due to the attributes of the crowd, this product is more in line with the unique aesthetics and tastes of young people, which is in line with Xiaomi Youpin. The positioning of high-quality people fits well.

On the other hand, Xiaomi Youpin aims to make consumer goods, and we are also using the logic of consumer goods for medical treatment and health nurture, there is a high degree of compatibility between us. Previously, Xiaomi Youpin did not launch a similar product. This product is also a bold attempt. In the early stage of research and development, Xiaomi Youpin even deeply participated in product design for product co-creation.

 

Q: Why did you choose to cooperate with the Forbidden City Variety Show?

A: ZDEER is very cautious when choosing IP cooperation. It is necessary to ensure a high degree of compatibility between the two parties and a strong cultural link to achieve cooperation. Similarly, the Imperial Palace is very strict in the selection of cooperative brands. The cooperation with ZDEER not only values our product research and development capabilities, but also recognizes the concept of ZDEER health nurture culture.

The cooperation with the Forbidden City Variety Show and the joint cooperation with the "Wu Huang Wan Shui" IP are all innovative attempts of marketing methods. On the one hand, ZDEER wants to connect with the market from a younger perspective. On the other hand, we view the Forbidden City as the orthodox inheritance of Chinese traditional culture, which has a profound influence on the Chinese people. ZDEER is determined to be the inheritor of Chinese health culture, empowering traditional health nurture with modern technology, and doing more for the health of the people.

 

Q: What are your thoughts on the marketing layout and how to use the current new marketing channels?

A: In the post-epidemic period, the health market has ushered in a new growth period. New brands need more efficient and fast marketing methods to seize sub-categories and establish advantages in market share. The ZDEER approach is to build up a set of own marketing methods to enhance brand exposure and increase product penetration in various channels and groups.

The ZDEER distribution channels cover Weibo, WeChat, Xiaohongshu, Tiktok, We Media, etc.,  build a KOL resource database that meets the characteristics of ZDEER brand.

In the previous live broadcast wave, ZDEER also digs into the flow channels for this purpose, keeps up with the pace of the times, and establishes a publicity matrix of "Weibo, WeChat, Tiktok, Bilibili, Xiaohongshu" to allow young people speak up for the brand in interesting places.

 

Q: What do you think of the future intelligent health nurture field? What are the key variables?

A: The "new era of health" has arrived, and the Health Law officially implemented on June 1, 2020 also clearly advocates: We must now shifting from focusing on treating diseases to  conditioning and prevention. Health is nurtured. It does not cure pre-existing diseases but pre-diseases. This is the direction of the future development of the comprehensive health industry.

As one of the mainstream directions of the future development of the comprehensive health field, the intelligent health nurture field has a broad market prospect and the future can be expected. As for the so-called "intelligent health nurture", "intelligence" is particularly crucial. If intelligent health brands want to gain a firm foothold in the market, they must continue to make efforts in research and development and use "intelligent technology" to drive the overall situation in order to lead the future in the comprehensive health market.

 

Q: What product line plans are there in the future?

A: For a long time, we have been studying the future shape and usage scenarios of medical products from the perspective of consumers. After jumping out of the box with intelligent moxibustion and gaining market attention, ZDEER insists on the "good product logic", which means a good product is the best way to jump out of the box. Product value is the core of data, especially consumer medical products, which can reach the core of users effectively only when they help users solve problems.

Next, ZDEER will devote itself to an in-depth analysis of the "good product logic", focusing on household-type consumer medical products, in-depth R&D and innovation in the fields of insomnia, rhinitis, hair loss, and lightweight health products. .

 

Q: What are the future plans for ZDEER?

A: Next, ZDEER will continue to focus on product development, market promotion, construction of patent barriers, product development and the coordinated development of the trinity of products, content and data.

At the same time, on the channel side, in addition to selling through major mainstream e-commerce platforms, ZDEER also plans to enter large supermarkets, digital collection stores, airport stores, etc., such as Costco. We will open our own stores in the future.

In addition to the continuous research and development of innovative categories, ZDEER also hopes to use creative marketing to speak out and open up data channels, so that more people can understand consumer medical brands, know that health nurture can be very close to life, and is an interesting life partner.